


never gonna outrun this

by The_Wavesinger



Category: Confident - Demi Lovato (Music Video)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger
Summary: Thea and Mikkel meet again, and cover new ground.





	never gonna outrun this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/gifts).



She trips.

It’s the stupidest thing, but Thea trips. And she’s been managing well enough until now, but she hasn’t slept in what feels like a week but is probably closer to three days and she’s clumsy and exhausted and so fucking tired, and she just—

She trips.

She trips, and she doesn’t get up, can’t make herself get up, her leg screaming fire from where a bullet grazed her the other day. She’s been running for so goddamned long now, running from Control and all its shadowy tendrils, and she’s tired. She doesn’t want to get up, even though not getting up means that she’ll be caught soon enough. She’s inside a secure facility, after all, and patrols won’t ignore this section of the building forever no matter how carefully she reprogrammed the security cameras.

It’s stupid, it’s incredibly stupid, after everything, but she doesn’t get up. She can hear footsteps, now, and she knows she’s going to die, but it’s been four weeks, almost, and her eyes are gritty and tired and her heart grittier and tireder and she’s on a fool’s errand, trying to bring down something she doesn’t even know the full reach of, and so if this is how she dies, then so be it, because she’s—

“ _Thea_?”

Thea blinks, because she knows that voice, knows the tone of the hushed whisper even though she only ever heard it for a brief span of hours. And then a face swims into her line of vision and it’s her. It’s really, actually her.

“Mikkel? What are _you_ doing here?”

“Helping you out, apparently,” Mikkel says, extending her hand.

It’s not so hard to get up after all.

—

Get in, grab the codes, get out.

Not as easy as it sounded, when Thea was alone, but with Mikkel by her side, it _is_ that easy. They get the coordinates of some of the harder-to-find black sites, too, a bonus, and Thea hasn’t felt this alive since—

Well, Thea hasn’t felt this alive in a long, long time. The fight is singing in her blood, adrenaline coursing through her, and she’s almost disappointed when they pass through the last fence—a simple chain link affair, but doubtless booby-trapped—without setting off any alarms.

Even in the dark, Thea can see Mikkel’s mouth curling up into a smile.

“What?” she asks, once they’re far away enough that they can talk.

“Nothing.” Mikkel shakes her head, but she’s still smiling. “Only—you’re bouncing.”

“I’m not!” Thea says. But she realizes that she is. Oh, her leg still hurts, but it doesn’t matter. It’s silly, and foolish, and any other number of synonyms, but right now she’s walking on air.

 

—

It doesn’t stay that easy, of course. They have the codes, now, except—they have the codes. Each of them came in, individually, for the decryption keys to a subsection of Control’s net, keys more precious than gold. It’s the first time Thea’s had anything like this in her grasp, and she’s not letting go.

Problem is, neither is Mikkel.

“So,” Mikkel says, “now what?”

They’ve gotten two rooms at a motel, far away enough from the facility that their presence won’t attract attention, and now Mikkel is in Thea’s room (blinds drawn, lamp dimmed, because you can never be too sure), sitting on the dirty, matted carpet with her back against the vomit-green wall. Thea’s perched gingerly on the bed, avoiding dubious-looking darker patches on the grey cloth. Between them lies the flash drive with _everything_ in it.

“I got there first,” Thea says, because she has to say it.

“You wouldn’t have got out if I wasn’t there,” Mikkel rejoins. That’s—a fair point, but Thea isn’t about to concede. Not on this. Not when this is everything.

“Doesn’t matter,” she says, and she can’t help the bite that enters her voice. “You wouldn’t have made it two feet into the facility if I hadn’t worked around their security.”

“What makes you think I didn’t have a plan already?” Mikkel’s frowning, now, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’m not an idiot, Thea.”

Thea fists the bedclothes so that her hands won’t make any stupid moves—to hit or hold, it doesn’t matter. Right now they’re all the same. “No. But you’re impulsive.”

Mikkel narrows her eyes. “You really want to go there?”

And no, Thea doesn’t. But she’s also not willing to give this up, and someone has to compromise. “We do this together.”

“Thea—”

Thea doesn’t look over. She doesn’t want to see what’s in Mikkel’s face. Her suddenly-soft tone is bad enough. “Neither of us is going to give this up. We do this together.”

—

Thea has a laptop, brand new and completely isolated, that she bought just for this. They have the key, but it’s not that easy, and they sip shitty vending machine coffee as they work and wait, until—

They have it.

They have it.

They pack what little they’ve bought, hastily, and move to the other, untouched room. Wipe down its surfaces. Pull on gloves. Then Thea carefully starts the ball rolling.

There’s not much they can find, of course, Control’s locked down tight, but. But. Things slip through the cracks. And cracks can become chasms.

(The brand on Thea’s arm burns. It had been a crack, a tiny hairline in Control’s smooth, perfect machinery, once. And now look where she is.)

—

They drive until it’s dawn once Thea has done all she can.

Mikkel’s driving, in deference to Thea’s exhaustion, but as the sun creeps over the horizon, Thea realizes she’s fucking _hungry_. She hasn’t eaten in—in a really, really long time, and she’s clutching the flash drive (a different one, the first one wiped and disposed of) like it’s a lifeline, and god, she would really, really like some sleep.

“Food,” she says. “Now.” Because she’s hungry enough and tired enough that spending more words than absolutely necessary is a bad idea right now.

Fortunately, Mikkel seems to understand, because she pulls over to  a seedy-looking diner soon after.

Thea orders copious quantities of scrambled eggs and toast, and while she waits she fidgets nervously. She doesn’t know Mikkel, not really, and there’s a strange fire under her skin that makes her self-conscious and hyperaware of her own body. The combination is a Bad Idea, more so when Mikkel catches her eyes. That’s—not good, whatever that sudden, leaping feel. That’s something she can’t afford right now.

The food isn’t good, but she doesn’t care. She inhales it anyway, because she’s tired and she’s hungry and because Mikkel is staring at her with those intense eyes and she suddenly wants to lean over the table and kiss her.

 _Fuck_.

That wasn’t supposed to happen, that was never supposed to happen, and this is bad. They agreed to leave each other and it’s not going to work now except—

Except on this thing they have to work together. And this tension—“I’m sorry, this isn’t probably the most articulate question right now, but do you feel this?” Thea gestures between them.

Mikkel looks up, and Thea really, really doesn’t like what she sees in her eyes. They’re flat and dead and—gone. “There’s nothing to feel.”

“Mikkel.” Now that Thea has words for it, she knows what it is. And surely Mikkel must too. She hopes. “You don’t know that.”

“I know my own mind, ‘and whatever it holds isn’t for you to see.”

Ouch. Now that’s a _hit_. “You feel this, though. You must.”

“It doesn’t natter what I feel. Control,” Mikkel says flatly, “has used everyone I have ever even looked twice at to try to hold my leash. You don’t want to be a casualty of that.”

True. And it would do Thea a whole lot of good to remember that Control didn’t only have Mikkel, but still. It’s stupid and it hurts that Mikkel won’t even look into her eyes.

It’s a stupid hurt, childish and ineloquent, and Thea marshals herself. She knows what she wants, now, but she also knows what she needs to do. What she needs to do is more important than what she wants.

“Let’s not think about it.” It’s a patchy solution, masking tape over a gaping wound at best, but they have things to do. Thea just got what might be a big break, and she’s not about to waste it. Taking Control down comes before everything else.

 And in this Mikkel must agree with Thea, because she nods. “We’ll—table it. It’s not mission essential.”

—

It takes five days of rundown motel rooms and equally rundown apartments, but suddenly, Mikkel’s shouting “I’ve got it!”. A moment later, Thea joins up all the dots too, and then she’s laughing, laughing because this is too good to be true. She dances over to Mikkel, hugs her and just holds onto her, because they’ve done it. They’ve _done_ it.

They have a location. They know where to go.

(And that means, of course, that Mikkel is going to leave just after. Thea hasn’t been slowing down for any reason, but even as she’s been puzzling her way through everything she’s been aware that the moment she succeeds—they succeed—Mikkel is going to leave.

Mikkel was always going to leave, she said that. She knew that. Knows that. Thea doesn’t trust her _because_ she’s going to leave.

But still.

Thea keeps thinking, _what does Control want?_ And the only answer is, _to play with lives and power_. She’s uneasy about how they factor into that, even now.)

—

The mission is—

It is. There are no grand facedowns. It’s an in-and-out thing, make a copy of the files and move stuff around so it’s not obvious what they were rooting around for.

And this facility isn’t guarded at all, either, because it’s just storage, a backup for a redundancy. And storage for papers that no-one without Control’s tattoo would understand. Just piles upon piles of nonsense. Control’s tattoo is the key, and of course everyone with that tattoo is at the service of Control. So the security is minimum. It’s just a grab and run.

They huddle together, afterwards, and it’s easy, so easy that it’s stupid. It’s _names_. Names of targets, names of agents, names of in-betweens. Names of people who wear the tattoo and names of people Control wants tattooed. It’s—it’s everything.

“If we can reach them before Control gets to them—” Mikkel says quietly.

“Or if we can break them out of whatever trap Control’s baited for them,” Theo finishes. It’s the direction she’s been looking for, the sly knife-stab in the dark, the way for them to confound at least some of Control’s games. She and Mikkel catch each other’s eyes, and they know they’re thinking the same thing. And in that synchronicity of thought they’re drawn together.

The kiss is sudden and fierce, and Thea leans into Mikkel, grasps her face between her hands, presses deeper, lips only at first but deepening into tongue. And it’s too much and not enough all at once, and Thea realizes only after she breaks away that she’s gasping, deep ragged breaths.

And Mikkel is looking at her, and oh. Oh. Thea really doesn’t like that look. “Thea—”

“No,” Thea says sharply.

“Thea, we can’t.”

“Mikkel.”

“ _Thea_.”

“Listen,” Thea says, because she’s had time to think this through and she’s been grasping and clawing her way to anything ever all her life, and she’s never really had _people_ , but she’s a quick study. She already knows more than she thought she could. “Listen. I know we can’t do—this all the time, but we make a great team. You know that. And from time to time—not all the time, not even often, we’ve got to go out, got to find those names, but a couple of times a year maybe—”

“Thea, I know you want this—”

And suddenly Thea is angry. “And you _don’t_? You kissed me!”

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” Mikkel says, and her voice is suddenly harsh, “and it doesn’t matter what I want. I kissed you, you kissed me, doesn’t matter. When we’re together, we’re a liability. We need to focus on Control, not on whatever this is.”

And suddenly Thea remembers that Mikkel was with Control a lot longer than she was. The brand burned into her arm throbs, but—that’s not it. It’s not just the brand, it’s everything, all this. “Control,” Thea says, “wanted us to fight. Anderson was an avatar of Control, and Control wanted us to fight. Wants us to fight.”

“Thea.” But Mikkel’s fists aren’t clenched anymore, and she uncrosses her hands.

“We’re not letting them win,” Thea says, and she knows she’s being so quiet that Mikkel almost can’t hear her. “ _I’m_ not letting them win, Mikkel. I’m not going to lose, not on this. I’m not going to let them make my choices for me. But if you want to walk away now, I won’t stop you.” Thea closes her eyes, because she won’t stop Mikkel, but to do that she has to not see her. Watching her walk away would be too much.

But when she opens her eyes again, Mikkel is still there. She looks—lost. “I don’t know what to do with this.”

Thea smiles. “I don’t know either. But we can figure it out can’t we?”

And Mikkel crosses the distance between them, and takes Thea’s hand. “Yes.”

—

That night, they sleep pressed together in a bed meant for one in a dirty motel room, Thea wrapping herself around Mikkel. Their weapons are laid carefully on the floor next to the bed—the motel is cheap enough that it doesn’t have a nightstand.

They’re not either of them going to be able to stay more than a few nights, and they’ll separate up soon, but they’ll meet again. They’ll meet again, and again, and again. And they’ll fight and fight, and it might not be a fight they live to see win, but eventually, somehow, someone’s going to win.


End file.
